Mapping and Visualizing Crime
Jingtong Feng and Zhaohu(Jonathan) Fan
Project 1
Introduction
The 2016 New York City crime dataset provides a special opportunity to play with data visually. As a a resident living close to Harlem, I am interested to see the crimes patterns near the neighborhood. Since the dataset covers a wide variety of crimes, visualizing them all at once might wash out any patterns contained in smaller subgroups. I have elected to see if there are any patterns within three selected crimes (Robbery, Harrassment, and Felony Assault) that can be explored visually.
The Data
The data was downloaded from the NYC Open Data (https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Public-Safety/NYPD-Complaint-Data-Current-YTD/5uac-w243) I extracted the variales of date and time of the incident occurence, boroughs, categories of the crimes, and the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the incident.
Data wrangling
## [1] DANGEROUS DRUGS
## [2] ROBBERY
## [3] ASSAULT 3 & RELATED OFFENSES
## [4] FELONY ASSAULT
## [5] MISCELLANEOUS PENAL LAW
## [6] VEHICLE AND TRAFFIC LAWS
## [7] DANGEROUS WEAPONS
## [8] PETIT LARCENY
## [9] GRAND LARCENY
## [10] CRIMINAL MISCHIEF & RELATED OF
## [11] HARRASSMENT 2
## [12] BURGLARY
## [13] UNAUTHORIZED USE OF A VEHICLE
## [14] OFFENSES INVOLVING FRAUD
## [15] OFF. AGNST PUB ORD SENSBLTY &
## [16] OFFENSES AGAINST PUBLIC ADMINI
## [17] CRIMINAL TRESPASS
## [18] INTOXICATED & IMPAIRED DRIVING
## [19] FORGERY
## [20] OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON
## [21] SEX CRIMES
## [22] BURGLAR'S TOOLS
## [23] RAPE
## [24] THEFT-FRAUD
## [25] GRAND LARCENY OF MOTOR VEHICLE
## [26] OTHER OFFENSES RELATED TO THEF
## [27] FRAUDULENT ACCOSTING
## [28] MURDER & NON-NEGL. MANSLAUGHTER
## [29] FRAUDS
## [30] OFFENSES AGAINST PUBLIC SAFETY
## [31] NYS LAWS-UNCLASSIFIED FELONY
## [32] POSSESSION OF STOLEN PROPERTY
## [33] GAMBLING
## [34] ADMINISTRATIVE CODE
## [35] AGRICULTURE & MRKTS LAW-UNCLASSIFIED
## [36] JOSTLING
## [37] ARSON
## [38] OTHER STATE LAWS (NON PENAL LA
## [39] ESCAPE 3
## [40] PROSTITUTION & RELATED OFFENSES
## [41] DISORDERLY CONDUCT
## [42] OFFENSES RELATED TO CHILDREN
## [43] THEFT OF SERVICES
## [44] UNLAWFUL POSS. WEAP. ON SCHOOL
## [45]
## [46] KIDNAPPING & RELATED OFFENSES
## [47] ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW
## [48] PETIT LARCENY OF MOTOR VEHICLE
## [49] CHILD ABANDONMENT/NON SUPPORT
## [50] ENDAN WELFARE INCOMP
## [51] OTHER STATE LAWS (NON PENAL LAW)
## [52] OTHER STATE LAWS
## [53] KIDNAPPING
## [54] INTOXICATED/IMPAIRED DRIVING
## [55] LOITERING/GAMBLING (CARDS, DIC
## [56] LOITERING
## [57] NYS LAWS-UNCLASSIFIED VIOLATION
## [58] ANTICIPATORY OFFENSES
## [59] HOMICIDE-NEGLIGENT-VEHICLE
## [60] NEW YORK CITY HEALTH CODE
## [61] DISRUPTION OF A RELIGIOUS SERV
## [62] HOMICIDE-NEGLIGENT,UNCLASSIFIE
## [63] ADMINISTRATIVE CODES
## 63 Levels: ADMINISTRATIVE CODE ... VEHICLE AND TRAFFIC LAWS## # A tibble: 3 × 2
## OFNS_DESC n
## <fctr> <int>
## 1 FELONY ASSAULT 20835
## 2 HARRASSMENT 2 65928
## 3 ROBBERY 15499Mapping
Comparing the three selected crimes
Creating Density Map
Take a closer look of the Harlem area
Observation
The overall structure of the contours seem to be about the same as the aggregate, with the largest hotspot centered in the harlem neighborhood southern Brox area. With Felony Assault and Robbery, these occurrences seem to be much more concentrated. Additionally, a hotspot for Harassment appears in the same area. Also, these three crime types generated the shades in the lower Manhattan area and Brooklyn area.
References
GGPlot2 Documentation)[https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ggplot2/ggplot2.pdf].
GGPlot2 Quickstart [https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~frazier/RSpatialGuides/ggmap/ggmapCheatsheet.pdf].
Project 2
Introduction
There are many different options for mapping, but we are going to focus on GIStools, which depends on several packages, including maptools, rgdal, and sp, and build up a basic mapping-crime map of New Haven, CT.
Plotting once these packages (sp in particular) are loaded is pretty straightforward; R now knows how to deal with these data types.
Let’s make a quick crime map
# head(blocks) # This is a MESS
head(data.frame(blocks)) # Coerce to dataframe first## NEWH075H_ NEWH075H_I HSE_UNITS OCCUPIED VACANT P_VACANT P_OWNEROCC
## 0 2 69 763 725 38 4.980341 0.393185
## 1 3 72 510 480 30 5.882353 20.392157
## 2 4 64 389 362 27 6.940874 57.840617
## 3 5 68 429 397 32 7.459207 19.813520
## 4 6 67 443 385 58 13.092551 80.361174
## 5 7 133 588 548 40 6.802721 52.551020
## P_RENTROCC NEWH075P_ NEWH075P_I POP1990 P_MALES P_FEMALES P_WHITE
## 0 94.626474 2 380 2396 40.02504 59.97496 7.095159
## 1 73.725490 3 385 3071 39.07522 60.92478 87.105177
## 2 35.218509 4 394 996 47.38956 52.61044 32.931727
## 3 72.727273 5 399 1336 42.66467 57.33533 11.452096
## 4 6.546275 6 404 915 46.22951 53.77049 73.442623
## 5 40.646259 7 406 1318 50.91047 49.08953 87.784522
## P_BLACK P_AMERI_ES P_ASIAN_PI P_OTHER P_UNDER5 P_5_13 P_14_17
## 0 87.020033 0.584307 0.041736 5.258765 12.813022 24.707846 7.888147
## 1 10.452621 0.195376 0.521003 1.725822 1.921198 2.474764 0.814067
## 2 66.265060 0.100402 0.200803 0.502008 10.441767 13.554217 5.722892
## 3 85.553892 0.523952 0.523952 1.946108 10.853293 17.739521 7.709581
## 4 24.371585 0.327869 1.420765 0.437158 6.229508 8.633880 2.950820
## 5 7.435508 0.758725 0.834598 3.186646 8.725341 8.194234 3.641882
## P_18_24 P_25_34 P_35_44 P_45_54 P_55_64 P_65_74 P_75_UP
## 0 12.479132 16.026711 8.555927 5.759599 4.924875 4.048414 2.796327
## 1 71.149463 7.359166 4.037773 1.595571 1.758385 3.712146 5.177467
## 2 8.835341 17.670683 17.871486 8.734940 5.923695 7.931727 3.313253
## 3 12.425150 18.113772 10.853293 9.056886 6.287425 4.266467 2.694611
## 4 7.103825 17.267760 16.830601 8.415301 7.431694 14.426230 10.710383
## 5 10.091047 29.286798 12.898331 7.814871 7.814871 6.904401 4.628225plot(blocks, lwd = 0.5, col = "darkseagreen1", border = "white") # Plot the 'lowest' first.
plot(roads, add = TRUE, col = "slategray3") # Roads on top
plot(breach, pch = 17, add = TRUE, col = add.alpha("#EE2C2C", 0.7)) # Add transparency
The Locator function lets you interact directly with the plot. You click within the plot, and it returns the coordinates of where you clicked. This is a reasonable way to get the coordinates when you are placing things like legends within the plot.
# locator() # Get Coordinates (commented for markdown)
plot(blocks, lwd = 0.5, col = "cornsilk", border = "antiquewhite2")
plot(roads, add = TRUE, col = "slategray3")
plot(breach, pch = 20, add = TRUE, col ="red")
# Add a scale bar, if you're into that
map.scale(xc = 540000, yc = 152000, # Position on map, in map units
len = miles2ft(2), # Length in feet (2 * 5,280)
units = "Miles",
ndivs = 4,
subdiv = 0.5)
#locator() # Click once on location, then hit finish button in plot window OR use the Esc key
# North arrow
north.arrow(xb = 540000, yb = 157000,
len = miles2ft(.2), # Length of base
col = "gray60",
border = "gray30",
tcol = "gray60") # Color
title(main = 'New Haven, CT.') # Title
title(main = "Crime Infested Wasteland", # Informative subtitle
line = -.2, # Move down
col.main = "red3",
font.main = 4, # Bold italic
cex.main = 1) # make a little smaller
Choropleth Maps
This is essentially a basic reference map, but we can also use the attribute data within the spatial classes to make thematic maps, such as choropleth maps. There are many ways to create choropleth maps, including a whole friggin’ package called choroplethr, but let’s use GISTools for consistency, which has some functions specifically for that. Let’s make two maps with the data we have: percent vacant and percent owner occupied.
# head(data.frame(blocks)) # Look at our data again
colnames(data.frame(blocks)) # Just the attribute names## [1] "NEWH075H_" "NEWH075H_I" "HSE_UNITS" "OCCUPIED" "VACANT"
## [6] "P_VACANT" "P_OWNEROCC" "P_RENTROCC" "NEWH075P_" "NEWH075P_I"
## [11] "POP1990" "P_MALES" "P_FEMALES" "P_WHITE" "P_BLACK"
## [16] "P_AMERI_ES" "P_ASIAN_PI" "P_OTHER" "P_UNDER5" "P_5_13"
## [21] "P_14_17" "P_18_24" "P_25_34" "P_35_44" "P_45_54"
## [26] "P_55_64" "P_65_74" "P_75_UP"blocks$P_VACANT[1:5] # Can be treated like a dataframe... sometimes ## [1] 4.980341 5.882353 6.940874 7.459207 13.092551# hist(blocks$P_VACANT) #Same for graphing
display.brewer.pal(5, "Blues")
# auto.shading builds off of color brewer to create classes
# Needs to be stored separately
shades.blue <- auto.shading(blocks$P_VACANT, cols = brewer.pal(7,'Blues')[3:7]) #Create a new color palette
shades.blue # Note class breaks## $breaks
## 20% 40% 60% 80%
## 5.4 7.6 10.0 13.0
##
## $cols
## [1] "#9ECAE1" "#6BAED6" "#4292C6" "#2171B5" "#084594"
##
## attr(,"class")
## [1] "shading"# ?auto.shading # Part of GIStools
choropleth(blocks,
v = blocks$P_VACANT, # Variable to be mapped
shading = shades.blue, # Shading object created above
bg = "gray30", # Background color
border = NA # No Border
)
plot(blocks,
add = TRUE,
col=NA,
border = add.alpha("#FFFFFF", .2) # partly transparent white
)
# choropleth maps attributes held in SpatialPolygons DataFrame (e.g., 'blocks')
choro.legend(px = 533000, py = 161000,
sh = shades.blue,
border = "#FFFFFF80", # Semitransparent white around boxes
bg = NA, # No background color,
bty = "n", # No outer box
text.col = "red", # Broken apparently
title.col = "white"
)
title(main = "Percent Vacant",
col.main = "gray20")
# Create new set of shades for Owner occupied percentage
shades.yell <- auto.shading(blocks$P_OWNEROCC,cols=brewer.pal(5,'YlOrRd')) #Create a new color palette
choropleth(blocks, blocks$P_OWNEROCC,
shading = shades.yell, # Shading object created above
bg = "gray30", # Background color
border = NA # No Border
)
plot(blocks,
add = TRUE,
col=NA,
border = add.alpha("#000000", .15) # partly transparent black
)
choro.legend(px = 533000, py = 161000,
sh = shades.yell,
border = NA,
bg = NA, # No background color,
bty = "n" # No outer box
)
# Add title
title(main = "Percent Owner Occupied",
col.main = "gray20")
Now, what would be even more interesting to put these side by side. Note that color choice is important, so these would probably work better with swapped palettes, since red is usually associated with ‘negative’ variables.
o.par <- par(no.readonly = FALSE)
# Put them side by side, adjust margins
par(mfrow = c(1, 2), mar = c(1, 0, 1, 0)) # mar =bottom, left, top, right
# Vacant Map
choropleth(blocks, v = blocks$P_VACANT, shading = shades.blue, bg = "gray30",
border = NA)
plot(blocks, add = TRUE, col = NA, border = add.alpha("#FFFFFF", 0.2))
choro.legend(px = 533000, py = 161000, sh = shades.blue, border = "#FFFFFF80",
bg = NA, bty = "n", text.col = "red", title.col = "white")
title(main = "Percent Vacant", col.main = "white", line = -1)
# Owner Occupied Map
choropleth(blocks, blocks$P_OWNEROCC, shading = shades.yell, bg = "gray30",
border = NA)
plot(blocks, add = TRUE, col = NA, border = "gray15") # Alpha not working on second plot??
choro.legend(px = 533000, py = 161000, sh = shades.yell, border = NA, bg = NA,
bty = "n")
title(main = "Percent Owner Occupied", col.main = "white", line = -1)
par(o.par)Raster in a Minute
Let us delve into the world of rasters. A type of raster can be created using just input points called a kernel density raster, which can be used to visualize relationships, but is prone to manipulation and can become misleading very quickly.
## SpatialPoints:
## Long Lat
## [1,] 551419.5 181266.3
## [2,] 556319.5 177580.7
## [3,] 551423.1 172304.5
## [4,] 550261.9 182613.2
## [5,] 555168.5 172163.4
## [6,] 549133.6 169623.6
## Coordinate Reference System (CRS) arguments: +proj=lcc
## +datum=NAD27 +lon_0=-72d45 +lat_1=41d52 +lat_2=41d12 +lat_0=40d50
## +x_0=182880.3657607315 +y_0=0 +units=us-ft +no_defs +ellps=clrk66
## +nadgrids=@conus,@alaska,@ntv2_0.gsb,@ntv1_can.dat## [1] "SpatialPixelsDataFrame"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "sp"## kde Var1 Var2
## 1 6.538740e-35 531731.9 147854
## 2 9.770069e-35 531922.3 147854
## 3 1.448876e-34 532112.7 147854
## 4 2.132528e-34 532303.2 147854
## 5 3.115218e-34 532493.6 147854
## 6 4.516606e-34 532684.0 147854## kde Var1 Var2
## 1 2.722636e-13 531731.9 188464.6
## 2 3.455488e-13 531922.3 188464.6
## 3 4.357233e-13 532112.7 188464.6
## 4 5.459338e-13 532303.2 188464.6
## 5 6.797505e-13 532493.6 188464.6
## 6 8.411979e-13 532684.0 188464.6
So this is a raster “heatmap” of where breaches of the peace happen, but it doesn’t have any context.
It would be nice if we could have a strong outline for the city, with lighter internal divisions, and not show anything outside the city. First, we need to create a masking polygon, then create an outline polygon, and then add the blocks, but with transparency.
Importing Shapefiles
Here we will import a shapefile with attribute data using rgdal, subset it to the area we want using attributes and a clipping polygon (with the GISTools package), and make a couple simple maps.
Available spatial data often comes in the nearly-universal shapefile format (.shp), but R by default isn’t able to process shapefiles.
As with everything else, you need the right package. There are several options, including rgdal, maptools, and PBSmapping (more information here)
While most of this tutorial relies on GISTools, which itself depends on several other spatial packages including maptools, rgdal is probably the most straightforward way as it automagically gets the projection information if provided in the shapefile.
The shapefile we will be using is from the US Census, and contains a significant amount of demographic attributes. Our particular data (Demographic Profile 1 of states) is hosted here.
First, some setup:
Now to actually use readOGR
## OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile
## Source: "D:/One_Geo/VisualizationTutorial/State_2010Census_DP1", layer: "State_2010Census_DP1"
## with 52 features
## It has 195 fieldsOf course, once it’s in there, it’s useful to take a look at it in a couple different ways. First:
class(murica) # What is this thing?## [1] "SpatialPolygonsDataFrame"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "sp"Note that the type of data is SpatialPolygonsDataFrame, which means there is geometry (SpatialPolgyons), and attributes (DataFrame). This is important since these can be manipulated separately. For example, you can treat it like a regular data frame.
## NULL## [1] "GEOID10" "STUSPS10" "NAME10" "ALAND10" "AWATER10"
## [6] "INTPTLAT10" "INTPTLON10" "DP0010001"## [1] "data" "polygons" "plotOrder" "bbox" "proj4string"## [1] Wyoming Pennsylvania Ohio
## [4] New Mexico Maryland Rhode Island
## [7] Oregon Puerto Rico Wisconsin
## [10] North Dakota Nevada Georgia
## [13] New York Arkansas Kansas
## [16] Nebraska Utah Alaska
## [19] Mississippi Oklahoma West Virginia
## [22] Michigan Colorado New Jersey
## [25] Delaware Montana Washington
## [28] Connecticut California Kentucky
## [31] Massachusetts Florida Idaho
## [34] Missouri Hawaii Alabama
## [37] South Carolina New Hampshire South Dakota
## [40] Illinois Tennessee Indiana
## [43] Iowa Arizona Minnesota
## [46] Louisiana District of Columbia Virginia
## [49] Texas Vermont Maine
## [52] North Carolina
## 52 Levels: Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California ... Wyoming## [1] New Mexico
## 52 Levels: Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California ... Wyoming## CRS arguments:
## +proj=longlat +datum=NAD83 +no_defs +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0## [1] "+proj=longlat +datum=NAD83 +no_defs +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0"Subsetting and Clipping Data
We can go ahead and clip out the continental US for a more convenient mapping set. This is a common workflow, since often you are dealing with an area of interest (AOI) that does not align with all of your data. There are two ways to get the continental US: spatially, and by attribute. First, we will use the attributes to subset the desired states. Second, we will use a spatial clip and then we will subset using attributes in the data.
Subsetting using Attributes
Subsetting by attribute is much easier than a spatial clip, so let’s start with that. We can create an array of booleans that we can use to subset the SpatialPolygonsDataFrame based off the name of the states and territories we don’t want. These are Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Note the use of logical operators (tips here). Super beginner stuff: Here, != is “is not”, and & is “and”, so this reads more or less “is this state name not Alaska, not Hawaii, and not Puerto Rico?”
## [1] Wyoming Pennsylvania Ohio New Mexico Maryland
## [6] Rhode Island
## 52 Levels: Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California ... Wyoming## [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## [12] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## [23] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## [34] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## [45] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
Subsetting by Spatial Clip
This method is very much more involved, but necessary for true spatial subsetting, where geometry (i.e., polygons) are required, like clipping national data to a state boundary.
The first step in a spatial clip is getting a clipping polygon, which we will define manually here, but often this another existing area such as a administrative boundary.
Creating a spatial polygon takes a few steps…
## xx yy
## [1,] -125.85075 23.44079
## [2,] -129.45032 52.25642
## [3,] -57.45885 51.61607
## [4,] -58.35875 22.80044
Clipping strips SpatialPolygonDataFrames of their attributes, which means you need a mechanism to restore those attributes. Long story short, but you can maintain the IDs of the features, and use those to re-join the dataframe back to the SpatialPolygon. This is easier if the clipping feature is also a SpatialPolygonDataFrame.
temp.df <- data.frame(value = 1, row.names = ID) # Create simple DF to add to SpatialPolgyon
clip.spdf <- SpatialPolygonsDataFrame(clip.raw, temp.df) # Merge the SpatialPolygon and temp.df to make SpatialPolygonDataFrame
class(clip.spdf) #Check that it is the correct class (SpatialPolygonDataFrame) and has data included## [1] "SpatialPolygonsDataFrame"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "sp"Finally, we are now ready for the actual clip.
## [1] "SpatialPolygons"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "sp"As you can see, the clip worked but there is no data. Unfortunately, there is no completely straightforward way of doing a clip on a SpatialDataFrame.
What you have to do is subset get an array of the maintained polgyons and use that to subset the original dataframe, then re-join that dataframe to our new SpatialPolygons.
First, we need the array that tells us which polygons we kept. This is saved in the ID of the polygons (since we clipped with byid =TRUE), which is a little tricky to access.
## [1] "clip 0"## [1] "clip 0" "clip 1" "clip 2" "clip 3" "clip 4" "clip 5" "clip 6"
## [8] "clip 8" "clip 9" "clip 10" "clip 11" "clip 12" "clip 13" "clip 14"
## [15] "clip 15" "clip 16" "clip 18" "clip 19" "clip 20" "clip 21" "clip 22"
## [22] "clip 23" "clip 24" "clip 25" "clip 26" "clip 27" "clip 28" "clip 29"
## [29] "clip 30" "clip 31" "clip 32" "clip 33" "clip 35" "clip 36" "clip 37"
## [36] "clip 38" "clip 39" "clip 40" "clip 41" "clip 42" "clip 43" "clip 44"
## [43] "clip 45" "clip 46" "clip 47" "clip 48" "clip 49" "clip 50" "clip 51"## [,1] [,2]
## [1,] "clip" "0"
## [2,] "clip" "1"
## [3,] "clip" "2"
## [4,] "clip" "3"
## [5,] "clip" "4"
## [6,] "clip" "5"
## [7,] "clip" "6"
## [8,] "clip" "8"
## [9,] "clip" "9"
## [10,] "clip" "10"
## [11,] "clip" "11"
## [12,] "clip" "12"
## [13,] "clip" "13"
## [14,] "clip" "14"
## [15,] "clip" "15"
## [16,] "clip" "16"
## [17,] "clip" "18"
## [18,] "clip" "19"
## [19,] "clip" "20"
## [20,] "clip" "21"
## [21,] "clip" "22"
## [22,] "clip" "23"
## [23,] "clip" "24"
## [24,] "clip" "25"
## [25,] "clip" "26"
## [26,] "clip" "27"
## [27,] "clip" "28"
## [28,] "clip" "29"
## [29,] "clip" "30"
## [30,] "clip" "31"
## [31,] "clip" "32"
## [32,] "clip" "33"
## [33,] "clip" "35"
## [34,] "clip" "36"
## [35,] "clip" "37"
## [36,] "clip" "38"
## [37,] "clip" "39"
## [38,] "clip" "40"
## [39,] "clip" "41"
## [40,] "clip" "42"
## [41,] "clip" "43"
## [42,] "clip" "44"
## [43,] "clip" "45"
## [44,] "clip" "46"
## [45,] "clip" "47"
## [46,] "clip" "48"
## [47,] "clip" "49"
## [48,] "clip" "50"
## [49,] "clip" "51"## [1] 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
## [24] 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
## [47] 49 50 51Now we can actually subset the data from the original murica dataset and combine it with the SpatialPolygon
## GEOID10 STUSPS10 NAME10 ALAND10 AWATER10 INTPTLAT10
## 0 56 WY Wyoming 251470069067 1864445306 +42.9918024
## 1 42 PA Pennsylvania 115883064314 3397122731 +40.9042486
## 2 39 OH Ohio 105828706692 10269012119 +40.4149297
## 3 35 NM New Mexico 314160748240 756659673 +34.4391265
## 4 24 MD Maryland 25141638381 6989579585 +38.9466584
## 5 44 RI Rhode Island 2677566454 1323668539 +41.5978358
## INTPTLON10 DP0010001
## 0 -107.5419255 563626
## 1 -077.8280624 12702379
## 2 -082.7119975 11536504
## 3 -106.1261511 2059179
## 4 -076.6744939 5773552
## 5 -071.5252895 1052567## [1] 52## [1] 49Finally, we can smash that data back into a SpatialPolgygonsDataFrame using the function… that is, uh, also named that.
murica.spdf.2 <- SpatialPolygonsDataFrame(real.murica.sp, data = murica.data,
match.ID = FALSE) # Create SpatialPolygonDataFrame
class(murica.spdf.2) # Check results - Note the object type## [1] "SpatialPolygonsDataFrame"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "sp"slotNames(murica.spdf.2) #Check results - Note the Data slot## [1] "data" "polygons" "plotOrder" "bbox" "proj4string"plot(murica.spdf.2, col = "gray90") # Plot that thang
Some Maps
Awesome, we now have the real ’Murica ready to go. We can now use the census data to make a couple informative maps. The most obvious is choropleth maps. Choropleth maps should not be used to map totals, but instead should be used to map proportions, since the various sizes of features can mislead readers. So, to map population, let’s roll with population density. Note that the rather obtuse names for the fields are explained in an .xls file that came in the same .zip as the shapefile.
## [1] 251470069067 115883064314 105828706692 314160748240 25141638381
## [6] 2677566454## [1] 97092.594 44742.451 40860.464 121297.465 9707.187 1033.808## [1] 121297.5## [1] 2059179## [1] 5.805036 283.899936 282.339038 16.976274 594.770890 1018.145134Now to get mapping… first, we need to create a color scheme, then we can use the choropleth function in GISTools to quickly make a choropleth map.
Legends are an art unto themselves, but lots of aesthetic options are available through the various parameters listed here.
Reprojecting
You may have noticed that the top of the continental US is straight, which depending on how picky you are looks awful. This is a result of the map projection used, and is something that can be changed. This is the sort of thing that is easy to code, but actually requires a lot of domain knowledge. Map projections are complicated beasts, and it’s often best to use something established, such as what your source data uses. You can also Google the best projections for your particular area of interest.
Once you know the name or class of projection you need, then what? Like everything else, you need the right format.
Typically projection information in R is contained with proj4strings (PROJ.4 strings), which are seemingly structured to confuse and deceive, but often something like an EPSG code is referenced elsewhere. Fortunately, these can be translated. Let’s say you have a totally sick heads up on a dope map projection for the continental US called US National Atlas Equal Area, and you have the EPSG code, which is 2163.
## code note
## 1 3819 # HD1909
## 2 3821 # TWD67
## 3 3824 # TWD97
## 4 3889 # IGRS
## 5 3906 # MGI 1901
## 6 4001 # Unknown datum based upon the Airy 1830 ellipsoid
## prj4
## 1 +proj=longlat +ellps=bessel +towgs84=595.48,121.69,515.35,4.115,-2.9383,0.853,-3.408 +no_defs
## 2 +proj=longlat +ellps=aust_SA +no_defs
## 3 +proj=longlat +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +no_defs
## 4 +proj=longlat +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +no_defs
## 5 +proj=longlat +ellps=bessel +towgs84=682,-203,480,0,0,0,0 +no_defs
## 6 +proj=longlat +ellps=airy +no_defs## [1] "+proj=laea +lat_0=45 +lon_0=-100 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +a=6370997 +b=6370997 +units=m +no_defs"Of course, you can naturally look this up all online, which is what (spatialreference.org)[http://spatialreference.org/] is for. You can search for projections, and pull the PROJ.4 string directly. Here is the page for the example above: (US National Atlas Equal Area)[http://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/2163/].
murica.lambert <- spTransform(murica.spdf, CRS(lambert.ea)) # CRS interfaces with PROJ.4 and parses the projection for spTransform
# summary(murica.lambert)
plot(murica.lambert) # Oooh pretty curve!
Okay, now to just re-do our previous map with our reprojected data.
